A batch process refers to that in industrial practical production, operators usually start from a variety of control indicators to find out an operation curve for a specific batch process based on long-time accumulated experience. Such a method of seeking an operation curve by means of experience is laborious, time-consuming and difficult to standardize and popularize. Thus, it is necessary to carry out a simple and effective batch process optimization method to obtain more satisfying economic indicators. The optimization of the batch process is usually aimed at improving the quality or yield of a product to obtain an optimal operation locus line. Therefore, the study on the method of obtaining the optimal operation curve of the batch process is the key to solve the problem.
The most common method of obtaining the optimal operation curve is a model-based offline optimization method, which is to offline solve the optimization problem based on a process model. However, the offline optimization is only applicable to an ideal model, and when uncertainties and disturbances in the process model affect the real-time operation of a system, the obtained locus line will no longer be optimal. At the same time, operation strategies and operation conditions of the process are required to be updated in real time by the change of a feedstock during operation, switching of products and raw materials and start/stop of the production process. Therefore, it is an important topic in the process industry to study the online real-time optimization method and technology for the batch process.
There have been many successful industrial application cases on real-time optimization based on a continuous process, whereas for the online real-time optimization technology for a batch process, there is still a lack of relatively general effective method suitable for industrial application. Therefore, it is extremely urgent to put forward a batch process online real-time optimization strategy and an implementation framework, which are relatively general and can solve real industrial problems to promote the industrialized process of online real-time optimization of the batch process, so as to provide a new method for solving the control problem in the field of practical production.